Plenary speakers

Paul Agnew

Paul Agnew is a geologist with 30 years of experience in minerals exploration with Rio Tinto Exploration. In his current role of Chief Geologist – Technical Support and Technology Development, Paul leads a team of technical specialists providing global support and managing internal and external Technology Development activities, focussed on the delivery of innovative exploration technologies to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of mineral exploration

Why are you are so excited about participating in IMA2018?
A great opportunity to demonstrate how mineralogy plays such an important role in the mining industry, including exploration for new mineral deposits.

Professor Jill Banfield

Jill Banfield was born in Armidale, NSW. She graduated from the Australian National University with a B.Sc. Hons. in Geology in 1981 and a M.Sc. under the direction of Prof. Tony Eggleton in 1985. She received a Ph.D. in mineralogy and transmission electron microscopy in 1990 from the Johns Hopkins University, U.S.A., Prof. David R. Veblen, supervisor. She was appointed as an Assistant Professor at UW Madison in 1990 in Geology and Geophysics. Between 1996 and 1998 she was co-appointed in the Mineralogical Institute, University of Tokyo, where she was promoted to Professor. She joined the Departments of Earth and Planetary Science and Environmental Science, Policy and Management, University of California, Berkeley in 2002 where she established a research group in geomicrobiology. She also holds an appointment as a Senior Faculty Scientist at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. Her current research is largely at the interface of microbiology and ecosystem science, with emphasis of molecular analysis of microbial communities and their impacts on the environment.

Dr Janice Bishop

Dr. Janice Bishop is a chemist and planetary scientist who explores the planet Mars using spectroscopy. She attended Stanford University for a BS in Chemistry and MS in Earth Science in 1988, followed in 1994 by a PhD in Chemistry with a joint thesis project in Planetary Geology sponsored by a NASA Graduate Student Researchers Program Fellowship. She was awarded an Alexander von Humboldt Fellowship for a postdoc in Berlin at the German Aerospace Center (DLR) and then a National Research Council Fellowship at NASA Ames in California. She has been a research scientist at the SETI Institute since 1999 and is currently Chair of Astrobiology and a member of the Science Council at the SETI Institute. Her investigations of CRISM spectral data from orbit at Mars are revealing clays and sulfates in the ancient rocks that provide information about the geochemical environment at the time the minerals formed. Dr. Bishop studies the spectral fingerprints of minerals and rocks in the lab for identification of these in the Martian data. Her research also involves collecting and studying Mars analog rocks and soils at a variety of locations including volcanic islands, cold deserts, hydrothermal regions, acidic aqueous sites, and meteorites which are the only Martian samples available on Earth to date.

Why are you are excited about participating in IMA2018?
IMA2018 will be a great opportunity to connect with mineralogists around the world. I’m looking forward to the conference and hearing the latest results from colleagues.

Professor Peter Burns

Peter C. Burns is the Henry Massman Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering and Earth Sciences and Concurrent Professor of Chemistry and Biochemistry at the University of Notre Dame (Indiana, USA), Director of the Center for Sustainable Energy at Notre Dame, and Director of an Energy Frontier Research Center focused on the materials science of actinides. Burns’ research emphasizes the solid state, aqueous, and cluster chemistry of uranium and neptunium, including uranium mineralogy and societally important issues such as nuclear waste disposal and transport of radionuclides in the environment. Starting in 2005, Burns developed a family of more than 100 nanoscale uranium-oxygen cage clusters that self-assemble in water, and he is developing applications of these to take advantage of their unique properties. Burns’ research has produced more than 380 published archival journal contributions, as well as three books. He has received various awards including the Peacock, Hawley and Young Scientist Medals of the Mineralogical Association of Canada, the Mineralogical Society of America Award, and the Donath Medal of the Geological Society of America.

Why are you are so excited about participating in IMA 2018?
IMA continues to be the premier mineralogical conference in the world, and Australia is an excellent venue for this meeting given the major contributions of the many mineralogists there.

Dr Kathryn Goodenough

Kathryn Goodenough is a Senior Geologist at the British Geological Survey, based in Edinburgh, Scotland. Her research focus is on studying mineral deposits, particularly deposits of the critical metals, and setting them into their broader geodynamic context. Kathryn is currently involved in three major international research consortia (EURARE, SoS RARE, and Hitech AlkCarb) that are making major advances in understanding all aspects of the supply chain for the rare earth elements and associated critical metals. These projects encompass field geology, mineralogy, geometallurgy and minerals processing, for a range of potential deposits from carbonatites in Greenland to weathered alkali granites in Madagascar. She has had a long association with the Mineralogical Society of Great Britain and Ireland, having been General Secretary from 2011-2016, and was involved in the Science Committee for IMA in Edinburgh in 2002: so I’m greatly looking forward to presenting our ongoing research at IMA 2018.

Why are you are excited about participating in IMA2018?
I was involved in IMA in 2002 when it was held in Edinburgh, but have not been able to attend subsequent editions. I’m delighted to be able to attend the 2018 edition and to present our ongoing research on the rare earth elements and associated critical metals. This will be a great opportunity to showcase the importance of mineralogy in developing a secure and sustainable supply of these elements that are so vital for modern technologies.

Professor Sergey V. Krivovichev

Sergey Krivovichev was born in 1972 and received his PhD and Doctor of Sciences degrees from St. Petersburg State University. He is currently a Head of the Federal Kola Science Centre of the Russian Academy of Sciences (Apatity, Russia) and Professor of Crystallography at St. Petersburg State University.

Why are you are excited about participating in IMA2018?
IMA2018 is a major meeting for mineralogists all over the world.

Professor Juraj Majzlan

Juraj Majzlan studied mineralogy at the Comenius University in Bratislava and completed his Diploma thesis on orogenic Sb-Au deposits in 1996. After short research work on ore deposits in Bratislava, Budapest, and Copenhagen, he started his PhD at the University of California at Davis, dealing with thermodynamics of iron and aluminum oxides, completed in 2002. As a Hess postdoctoral fellow, he investigated acid mine waters at the Princeton University, using spectroscopic techniques. The next position in Freiburg (Germany) allowed him to continue in thermodynamics, spectroscopy, and crystallography of acid mine drainage, but also to return to field work. Since 2009, he is a full professor at the University in Jena (Germany), with a focus on environmental mineralogy, thermodynamics of minerals, geobiology, and ore deposits. He is the secretary of European Mineralogical Union and member of editorial boards of Mineralogical Magazine and Chemie der Erde – Geochemistry. Apart from publishing scientific papers, he translated two textbooks into Slovak and holds talks for pupils in the state of Thuringia.

Why are you are excited about participating in IMA2018?
Minerals and rocks hide many secrets. Going to the field, walking through the cities and riding train across the country, I always ask what can be learned and understood if the right questions are asked. I am excited to attend the IMA conference to see the progress, to find out about the new questions and the new possibilities. Secrets mean surprises and I hope that there will be surprises at the conference.

Professor Emil Makovicky

Emil Makovicky passed his early academic years at the University of Bratislava in a circle of several well-known crystallographers. He obtained his PhD at McGill University in Montreal, Canada in 1970; his postdoctoral stay was at the Yale University, New Haven, USA. Since autumn 1972 he has been teaching at the Faculty of Natural Sciences of the University of Copenhagen in Denmark, in 1995-2014 as professor of mineralogy, afterwards continuing as emeritus. Crystal chemistry, modular classification and mineralogy in general and especially those of complex sulfides (‘sulfosalts’) were his main point of interest. This resulted in definition of a number of sulfosalt families, homologous and other series, fundamental crystal chemical rules for compounds with lone electron pairs and, with his close colleagues, in new structures and mineral species. Phase relations of platinum-group elements in magmatic ore deposits, element substitutions in the tetrahedrite family, layer-misfit structures, O-D phenomena, as well as symmetries of, and quasiperiodicity in, Islamic and other ornamental arts are other topics of his interest.

Dr Frank Reith

Frank Reith obtained a PhD from the Australian National University (Australia) in 2006 for his pioneering work on the geomicrobiology of gold. From 2007 to 2015 he was an ARC Research Fellow at the School of Earth and Environmental Sciences, University of Adelaide (UoA). In March 2015 he was appointed as senior lecturer, and currently holds an ARC Future Fellowship in The School of Biological Sciences, UoA. He heads the Microbes and Heavy Metal Research Group at the Waite Research Institute, where his laboratory is co-located in CSIRO Land and Water since 2004.
Dr Reith’s research aims to understanding the interactions of microorganisms and trace metals in surface environments. He is leading a multidisciplinary research projects aimed at uncovering the fundamental mechanisms of biochemical, geobiological, and geochemical cycling of gold and other heavy/noble metals from individual cells to entire landscapes. From this fundamental understanding he aims to develop novel prospecting and processing technologies for the gold industry.